Browsing by Author "Vogel, Mary"

Now showing 1 - 8 of 8
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    Bus Amenity Corridors: Shaping and Reshaping the Metropolitan Area by Designing for Bus Use
    (Center for Transportation Studies, University of Minnesota, 1995-03) Vogel, Mary; Martin, Roger; Neckar, Lance
    Table of Contents: Overview; Urban Structure and Transportation; Design Methods as Inquiry; The Study Corridor; General Principles; Hennepin Avenue, Franklin to 28th; Uptown; Hennepin Avenue, 31st to 36th; Linden Hills; 50th and France; Southdale; Environmental Intersections; Sources.
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    City Rebuilding: The University Avenue Bus Corridor
    (1997-10) Vogel, Mary; Pettinari, James; Neckar, Lance M
    Transit service can greatly affect the form and vitality of a city. This work examines the opportunity to revitalize the University Avenue transit service as part of a permanent transit-oriented corridor. Because University Avenue has traditionally connected important destinations, the current service is one of the most successful in the Twin Cities. However, changing economic conditions in the districts along the avenue threaten its vitality. Transit-oriented redevelopment could be a solution. Because long-term investments in transit oriented development on this avenue would require incentives beyond the current tax abatement, several kinds of physical changes are recommended in this document: Retrofitting the 120-foot-wide portion University Avenue Corridor as a dedicated bus transit-way; Rezoning infill parcels to revitalize street frontages and reduce requirements for off-street parking; Urbanistic ideas for infill development, including an emphasis on medium- to high-density residential and mixed-use retail and office. These physical ideas seem well supported by the demographics and many of the cultural, political, and economic issues that need to be addressed in concert with transit redesign efforts. This integrated approach is critical to the rebuilding of the core of the Twin Cities and balancing the surge of suburban development.
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    Linking Light Rail Transit to the City: Six Neighborhood Station Districts
    (1999-08-01) Vogel, Mary; Pettinari, James; Neckar, Lance M; Chang, Sishir; Mikonowicz, Aaron; Peterson, Garneth
    In this project, landscape architects, architects, and urban design professionals explored land use opportunities and challenges in the six neighborhood light rail stations of South Minneapolis' Hiawatha Corridor. They studied the Cedar Riverside, Franklin Avenue, Lake Street, Thirty-Eighth, Forty-Sixth, and Minnehaha station areas, analyzing land use patterns, pedestrian and vehicular routes, current zoning, destinations, and potential development sites. They gathered comments from residents in public meetings. Based on the analysis and public feedback, the researchers identified potential development scenarios for each station area. This report summarizes those scenarios.
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    Minnesota Network of Parks and Trails: Framework January 2011
    (Center for Changing Landscapes, 2011) Vogel, Mary; Ek, Alan R.; Davenport, Mae; Schneider, Ingrid; Zerger, Cindy; Schreurs, Brian; Oftedal, Andrew; Vanagaite, Egle; Smith, Alex; Filter, Lisa; Date, Andrea; Picone, Lisa
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    Personal Safety and Transit: Paths, Environments, Stops, and Stations
    (Center for Transportation Studies, University of Minnesota, 2002-04-01) Vogel, Mary; Pettinari, James
    As the Twin Cities Metropolitan Area looks to improve transit choices and seeks to improve existing transit service, the safety of transit users needs to be an issue that is considered carefully as each new service is added, old services changed, and new stops are added. This report is intended to be a resource for informing transit decisions in the Twin Cities Metropolitan Area and in Greater Minnesota. It does not address the safety of the transit vehicle itself; many studies have done that. It focuses on the design of transit environments as they impact the personal safety of transit users. The report looks at site specific physical design issues, that is, transit stop or station design. But it also goes beyond to address the nature of the larger environment in which the transit stop or station is located. Issues of access are also addressed because the character of the pathways leading to and from transit stops are integral parts of the transit environment .
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    Rural Community Transit Strategies: Building on, Expanding, and Enhancing Existing Assets and Programs
    (Minnesota Department of Transportation, 2023-02) Fisher, Thomas; Vogel, Mary; Khani, Alireza; Burga, Fernando
    This project involved the development of innovative sharing-economy strategies to address rural transit challenges in Greater Minnesota. Many transit services and transportation network companies (TNCs) like Uber and Lyft do not provide services to commuters outside metro areas, forcing most residents in Greater Minnesota to own automobiles. Meanwhile, many communities have school bus systems and substantial vehicle capacity that remain parked and unused much of the day. This project uses a human-centered design approach to engage a community in Greater Minnesota with a population of less than 10,000 people to develop a pilot for rural community transit that could be a model for similar communities across the state. The research seeks to answer the question of whether a shared, mobility services approach to rural transit transportation in Greater Minnesota could meet people's needs at a lower cost, with more convenience, and with greater positive impacts on the local economy than current transit practices and services. Our research developed a menu of strategies that uses existing community assets to promote walking, biking, car sharing, bus sharing, and car and van pooling.
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    The Snelling Corridor and Its Districts: Developing and Enhancing a Transit-Oriented Lattice Connective Structure
    (Center for Transportation Studies, University of Minnesota, 2001-08-01) Neckar, Lance M.; Vogel, Mary
    Streets have a dual role in cities: they provide the spatial armature, or framework, that defines and gives form to the public realm, and they serve as the primary circulatory system of cities accommodating a variety of modes of transportation. Historically, major corridor streets in a city have connected important locations and defined districts around critical intersections and provided employment and commercial services. At the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, fixed rail and bus transit had a large impact on the order and scale of cities in the western world because transit became a primary means of transportation for the public. Identifiable, densely used streets that worked well with transit became important civic arteries that facilitated movement, generated development, and gave form and identity to the districts of the city. The accessibility provided by the physical structure of the street and its transportation systems became a basis for civic connectivity, and often good transit promoted a sense of vitality and shared community resources. Today, however, the automobile has recast these relationships. In many cities, fundamental civic planning and design decisions have been driven by single-purpose criteria that support the movement and storage of cars. Private transportation has eroded the quality of city streets, especially those corridors that have become arterial streets with large volumes of traffic. In light of these changes, the researchers asked, "Can transit-oriented development build community values? Can older values that used physical connectivity to reinforce social cohesion shape the future? How would new (and old) locational values underpin a transit-oriented reinvestment in the existing city? What design and planning models might suggest how the Twin Cities could foster this kind of change?" With the restructuring of transit authority in recent years, the Twin Cities Metropolitan Council now has the opportunity to operate as a transit authority and to coordinate planning and design with transit service provisions. The researchers began this project with an intense field investigation of and discussions with Met Council and Metro Transit staff about the possibilities for study of a metropolitan corridor that could improve ridership, and at the same time, enhance the livability of the districts that were served. Among the metropolitan corridors considered was the Snelling Avenue Corridor, which stretches from one first-ring suburban edge to another. This route cuts a cross-section as it traverses across the entire fabric of the metropolitan area. It serves neighborhoods that reflect the growth tensions of the city of St. Paul, where investment is being pulled southwest and northeast, leapfrogging existing urban infrastructure. The route links some major origins and destinations (such as education, shopping, service, and job land uses) and along it, there may be opportunities for mixed-use development that would incorporate high-density residential. The researchers concluded that the Snelling Avenue Corridor and the Route No. 4 bus service provided a significant opportunity to accomplish some immediate goals of Metro Transit and the city of St. Paul while also exposing the greatest variety of other issues that are accessible or solvable by corridor analysis and a transit-based urban design strategy. The Snelling Avenue Corridor offers an important opportunity to use transit to revitalize neighborhoods and to restructure the city and the metropolitan area. Fundamental land use and urban design decisions must be coordinated with transit planning and operation on this corridor. The unique locational advantage of this corridor means that an enhanced Snelling Avenue has the potential to alter the relationship between the core and the first ring of suburban growth on the north side of the city, since transit can cross and unite municipal jurisdictions. Critical to this opportunity is a mix of land uses that create jobs on or near the transit line. The aim of this study was to suggest a pattern of transit-oriented redevelopment that will reinforce Snelling Avenue's role as an important north-south metropolitan armature and improve the connectivity of the Snelling Corridor with critical east west transit corridors and their related districts. This strategy depends on public policy that emphasizes the central role transit plays in connecting the various centers that already exist on the corridor and that promotes improvements of the transit environment as a catalyst for private reinvestment. This study recommends changing Snelling Avenue incrementally over time from a car-dominated environment to an armature that accommodates the needs of transit users while still serving as an important artery for cars and trucks. The transformation of the Snelling Corridor into a multi-modal street could be designed by: - identifying compatible redevelopment opportunities, - recommending transit-friendly adaptations of circulation, - encouraging building patterns that support the Snelling Corridor as an identifiable civic street, and - providing enhancement to the public armature through design. The central design strategies must operate across the scales of the immediate site, the district, the city, and the metropolitan area.
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    St. Paul Central Corridor Study: Pierce Butler Industrial Redevelopment Parkway
    (2003-12-01) Neckar, Lance M; Pettinari, James; Vogel, Mary
    At present, development in the St. Paul Central Corridor is occurring piecemeal and lacks an integrative vision. This study's aim was to devise design approaches that create a district which integrates light industrial job creation and retention with the incorporation of a permanent, value-added public open space armature that performs multiple functions with the ability to adapt to changes in employment. The development of an industrial parkway district along the Pierce Butler route in the corridor would create a linear redevelopment district in the heart of St. Paul. The research team will work in conjunction with public policymakers and planners to establish general goals for the corridor to guide future development of infrastructure, neighborhoods, and specific sites.